Famous contemporary photographers. Category: Interesting

The image can speak all languages. And their language is understood not only by photographers, but also by photography lovers, just grateful viewers. Photography has witnessed the evolution of cameras, from the traditional camera obscura to the modern digital one. All of them were used to obtain an excellent image. When you think about some of the most famous photographers from the past and present, photography is an art and not just “freezing” the moment.

When William Henry Fox Talbot invented the negative/positive photographic process, he probably had no idea how popular his invention would be. Today, photography, and accordingly the specialization of photographers, are divided into different categories which vary from fashion, wildlife, interiors, portraits, travel, food to... The list is endless. Let's take a look at some of the most famous photographers in the most popular photography categories. See also examples of their work.

Fashion

Irving Penn
This American photographer is known for his chic and elegant shots, especially from the post-World War II era. Since 1938, he has collaborated with Vogue magazine and actively uses the technique of white and gray backgrounds. It is the use of this technique that makes it the greatest photographer that time. Penn's photography has always been one step ahead of its time. A series of nude shots made a lot of noise.

Terence Donovan
This British photographer was known for his photographs of the fashion world in the 60s. His indefatigable thirst for adventure was reflected in his work, and in order to obtain beautiful images, the models performed rather daring stunts. Approximately 3,000 advertising images, this man was a member of the richest people in London and was a popular celebrity photographer.

Richard Avedon
It was he who moved away from the traditional understanding of models. Born in New York and set up his own studio in 1946. Richard Avedon showed models in natural light, and many of his works have been published in the pages of Vogue and Life magazines. As a photographer, he received many awards in his time and the images he created were recognized all over the world.

Nature and Wildlife

Ansel Adams
Born in the city of San Francisco. Made a huge contribution to the development black and white photography. He was interested in questions related to nature. Ansel Adams is the author of several epic photographic frescoes. Received three Guggenheim Fellowships.

Frans Lanting
Frans was born in Rotterdam. His work could be seen on the pages of such magazines as National Geographic, Life, Outdoor Photographer. Frans traveled a lot and his photographs clearly express his love for the flora and fauna of the rainforests.

Galen Rowell
For many years, Galen conveyed the relationship between man and the desert. His photographs, like nothing else, conveyed the fascinating and magnetic beauty of these sultry places. 1984 award winner. Collaborated with many well-known publications of the time. Rowell's work was distinguished by its depth and coverage of everything new in the displayed topic.

Photojournalism

Henri Cartier-Bresson ( Henri Cartier—Bresson)
French photographer who influenced the development of photojournalism for many years. Received international recognition for his coverage of Gandhi's funeral in India in 1948. He traveled extensively around the world and firmly believed that the art of a photojournalist was to capture the “right” moment. Some call him the father of the photo essay.

Eddie Adams
Pulitzer Prize winner and winner of more than 500 prizes. His photographs depicting the Vietnam War from the inside shocked the whole world. Adams also took portraits of celebrities, politicians and military leaders of the time. He believed that the photographer should be able to manipulate the scene in order to reflect the truth.

Felice Beato
Famous "war photographer". His penchant for travel has allowed him to capture many moods and moments in different corners of the earth. Traveled to India, Japan, China. It was Felice who captured the Indian uprising of 1857 and the events of the second Opium War. His powerful and immortal work is still a source of inspiration for photojournalists.

Portrait photography

Ueno Hikoma
Born in Nagasaki. Fame brought portrait work and landscape photography. Started with his own commercial studio, where he acquired tremendous experience in portraiture. The author of portraits of many famous and famous people that time. In 1891 he made a portrait of the Russian heir to the throne.

Philippe Halsman
Although Halsman suffered some early setbacks in his personal life, this did not stop him from becoming a great portrait painter of his time. His photographs were somewhat sharp and dark and differed significantly from the portraits of the time. Portraits were published in many magazines of that time, including Vogue. After meeting the surrealist artist Salvador Dali, he decides to make a surreal portrait of Dali, a skull and seven nudes. Three hours were spent on the implementation of the planned work. It was he who developed the philosophy of displaying a person in motion, in a jump. He believed that this was the only way to show a “real” person from the inside. At the peak of his career, he took portraits of celebrities such as Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, Winston Churchill, Judy Garland and Pablo Picasso.

Hiro Kikai ( Hiroh Kikai)
The popularity of this Japanese photographer brought monochrome portraits of the inhabitants of the Asakusa district (Tokyo). In his early years, he witnessed many clashes and spent all his free time photographing visitors to Asakusa. A perfectionist by nature, he could spend several days looking for the right person - the subject of shooting.

aerial photography

Talbert Abrams
The first shots in this category were taken while serving in the US Marine Corps during World War II. Photographic images of the squadron during the period of insurgency in Haiti helped decide to continue this art.

William Garnett ( William Garnett)
Born in Chicago in 1916, he began his career as a photographer and graphic designer in 1938. Assisted the US Army in the production of training films for US troops. By 1949, he had already acquired his own aircraft and switched to aerial photography.

Underwater photography

Dustin Humphrey
A surfer and photography enthusiast who has his own photography studio in Bali. His passion for surfing helped him take some amazing photos for which he received the Sony World Photography Award in 2009. It's amazing how he managed to gather so many people and film it all without a single cut!

The year 1939 is considered to be the year of the invention of photography. Since that time, the technique of photography and the concept itself has changed dramatically. Regardless of when the photograph was taken, some of them have left an unforgettable mark on history. We present to you the most famous photos.

National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry captured an Afghan girl in his famous photo. In 2002, the girl was found and her name became known - Sharbat Gula. In 1985, a photograph of a refugee girl appeared on the cover of National Geographic, after which she gained worldwide fame and became a symbol of the suffering of refugees around the world.

The photo of the Legendary Liverpool Four was taken on August 8, 1969. The photo was created as a cover for the last 12th album of the group. And interestingly, it took exactly 6 minutes for this frame. Impressive fans saw in the photo a lot of signs that confirmed the death of Paul Macartney. According to them, the photo shows a double of the musician, and Paul himself died. The photo composition itself is a symbolic presentation of the funeral. Closed gas musician, he goes barefoot and out of step with the other participants. Paul was left-handed and cannot hold a cigarette in his right hand. Well, the cigarette itself is a sign of a nail in the coffin lid. But in reality, the photograph symbolized only one death. The Beatles were in the process of breaking up the band. The 12th album is the last collaboration.

The photograph is titled The Torment of Omaira. A girl, Omaira Sanchaz, was trapped in a concrete wall after the volcanic eruption of Nevado del Ruiz (Colombia) in 1895. For 3 days, rescuers tried to save the child. The photo was taken a few hours before her death.

The photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono became famous for being taken hours before the musician's murder. The photo became the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. The picture belongs to the famous American photographer Annie Leibovitz, who has worked with Rolling Stone since 1970.

Mike Wells, UK. April 1980 Karamoja region, Uganda. A starving boy and a missionary.

For this picture, photographer Kevin Carter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. The photo is titled "Hunger in Sudan". After the photo was published on March 26, 1993 in magazine New York Times, she has become a symbol of the tragedy of Africa. Probably everyone has a question what happened to the girl next? Why didn't they help her? HER fate is not known. Kevin Carter didn't help the dying girl. In 1994, the author of the photo committed suicide.

Rhine II by Andreas Gursky. The picture was taken in 1999. The photo shows the Rhine between the dikes under an overcast sky. An interesting fact is that the photo was taken with Photoshop. Gursky deleted
power plant, port facilities and a dog walker. At the Christie's auction in New York, $4,338,500 was given for the picture. This is the most expensive photograph in history.

Albert Einstein with his tongue hanging out. The reason for this act of the scientist was his attitude towards annoying journalists and photographers. The photo was taken at the celebration of the scientist's 72nd birthday in 1951. Photography is a kind of symbol and calling card Albert Einstein, able to joke and rejoice.

Switzerland. The photo shows the effects of freezing rain. If you do not take into account how much destruction this rain brought, this phenomenon is of extraordinary beauty.

The legendary photo "Lunch on a skyscraper". At a skyscraper construction site, eleven workers have lunch at a height of 200 meters. None of them express even an ounce of concern. Early publications do not include the photographer's name. But some experts claim that the author of the work is Lewis Hine. His portfolio includes many shots of the construction of Rockefeller Center.

This amazing photo was taken in 1948 without the use of Photoshop and technology. It is customary to call her Dali and cats. Photographer Phillip Halsman has been friends with Dali for 30 years.

The photograph is the most replicated photograph in history. The creator of the masterpiece is Alberto Korda. A photo with Che Guevara has become a kind of brand. The image of the Cuban revolutionary can be found on all sorts of items: clothes, dishes, badges, etc.

November 25, 1963 The funeral of President John F. Kennedy and the birthday of his son. In the photo, John F. Kennedy Jr. salutes his father's coffin.

Dolly the Sheep is the world's first successfully cloned mammal. Dolly was born on July 5, 1996 as a result of an experiment by Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell. Her life lasted 6.5 years. In 2003, Dolly was euthanized and her effigy is on display at the Royal Museum of Scotland.

A boy with a grenade in his hand. The work of photographer Diana Arbus. In the photo is the son of tennis player Sidney Wood, Colin Wood. In his right hand, the boy holds a toy grenade. It seems that the child is terribly frightened, but in fact the photo did not work out for a long time and the boy shouted in hysterics “Take it off already!”. $408,000 in 2005, an unknown collector paid for the photo.

An old man and a dog met after a US tornado in March 2012.

A Sudan People's Liberation Army soldier during a rehearsal for the Independence Day parade. Strong photo.

All photos below are the winners of the World Press Photo Contest of various years.

"The most famous photograph that no one has seen" is how Associated Press photographer Richard Drew calls his picture of one of the victims of the World shopping center who jumped out of a window to her own death on 9/11. "On that day, which was captured on camera and on film more than any other day in history," Tom Junod later wrote in Esquire, "the only taboo by common consent was pictures of people jumping out of windows." Five years later, Richard Drew's Falling Man remains a terrible artifact of that day that should have changed everything but didn't.

A photograph that showed the face of the Great Depression. Thanks to legendary photographer Dorothea Lange, Florence Owen Thompson has been the epitome of the Great Depression for many years. Lange took the photograph while visiting a vegetable picker camp in California in February 1936, wanting to show the world the resilience and resilience of a proud nation in Hard times. Today, such photos (as well as videos) can be taken using the xiaomi yi action camera, but in those days, more primitive cameras were used. The story of Dorothea's life turned out to be as attractive as her portrait. At 32, she was already the mother of seven children and a widow (her husband died of tuberculosis). Finding themselves virtually destitute in the resettlement labor camp, her family subsisted on the meat of the birds the children managed to shoot and vegetables from the farm, as did the rest of the 2,500 camp workers. The publication of the photo produced the effect of an exploding bomb. The story of Thompson, which appeared on the covers of the most authoritative publications, caused an immediate response from the public. The Resettlement Administration immediately sent food and emergency supplies to the camp. Unfortunately, the Thompson family had already left the habitable place by this time and received nothing from the generosity of the government. It should be noted that at that time no one knew the name of the woman depicted in the photograph. Only forty years after the publication of this photograph, in 1976, Thompson "revealed" herself by giving an interview to one of the national newspapers.

Stanley Forman/Boston Herald, USA. July 22, 1975, Boston. A girl and a woman fall trying to escape the fire.

Photographer Nick Yut took a photo of a Vietnamese girl running away from the exploding napalm. It was this picture that made the whole world think about the war in Vietnam. A photo of 9-year-old girl Kim Fook on June 8, 1972 went down in history forever. Kim first saw this picture 14 months later at a hospital in Saigon, where she was being treated for strange burns. Kim still remembers running from her siblings on the day of the bombing and can't forget the sound of the bombs falling. A soldier tried to help and doused her with water, unaware that this would make the burns worse. Photographer Nick South helped the girl and took her to the hospital. At first, the photographer doubted whether to publish a photo of a naked girl, but then he decided that the world should see this picture. The photo was later named the best photo XX century. Nick Yut tried to keep Kim from becoming too popular, but in 1982, when the girl was studying at the medical university, the Vietnamese government found her, and since then Kim's image has been used in propaganda chains. “I was under constant control. I wanted to die, this Photo haunted me,” says Kim. Later there was immigration to Cuba, where she was able to continue her education. There she met her future husband. Together they moved to Canada. Many years later, she finally realized that she couldn't run away from this photo and decided to use it and her fame to fight for peace.

Triangle Shirtwaist Company building fire, 1911 The American Triangle Shirtwaist Company became famous in the United States for its love of cheap labor by young immigrant women in its factories. Since the risk remained that such personnel would steal, in work time the doors of the workshops were closed until the end of the shift. It was this "tradition" that caused the tragedy that occurred on March 25, 1911, when a fire broke out on the ninth floor of a factory building in New York. At first, witnesses to the fire thought that the workers were saving the most expensive fabrics from the fire, but, as it turned out, the people locked in the burning workshop jumped out of the windows themselves. After that, a nationwide campaign aimed at improving worker safety began in the United States.

Biafra, 1969 When the Igbo tribe declared itself independent from Nigeria in 1967, Nigeria imposed a blockade on their former eastern region of Nigeria, the newly proclaimed Republic of Biafra. The war between Nigeria and Biafra lasted 3 years. During this war, more than a million people died mainly from starvation. War photographer Don McCullin, who took this photo, commented on his visit to the camp, where there were 900 starving children: "I don't want to photograph battlefield soldiers anymore."

Mustafa Bozdeinir/Hurriyet Gazetesi, Turkey. October 30, 1983. Koinoren, eastern Turkey. Kezban Ozer found her five children dead after a devastating earthquake.

James Nachtwey/Magnum Photos/USA for Liberation, USA/France. November 1992 Bardera, Somalia. A mother lifts the body of her child, who has died of starvation, to take it to the grave.

Hector Rondon Lovera/Diario La Republica, Venezuela. June 4, 1962, naval base Puerto Cabello. A sniper mortally wounded a soldier who is now holding on to the priest Luis Padillo (Luis Padillo).

Yasushi Nagao/Mainichi Shimbun, Japan. October 12, 1960, Tokyo. A right-wing student kills Socialist Party chairman Inejiro Asanuma.

Helmut Pirath, Germany. 1956, eastern Germany. The daughter meets a German prisoner of World War II, released by the USSR to freedom.

Mike Wells, UK. April 1980 Karamoja region, Uganda. Terribly hungry boy and missionary.

DEATH OF GOEBBELS. During the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the main ideologist of fascism, Joseph Goebbels, took poison, having previously poisoned his family - his wife and six children. The corpses, according to his dying order, were burned. Before you is a photograph depicting the corpse of a criminal. The shot was taken in the building of the Imperial Chancellery on May 2, 1945 by Major Vasily Krupennikov. On the back of the picture, Vasily wrote: “We covered the causal place of Goebbels with a handkerchief, it was very unpleasant to look at it ...”

All the pain in just one look ... (Henry Cartier Bresson) The photo was taken in 1948-1949, when the author traveled to China. The picture shows a hungry boy standing idle for a long time in an endless queue for rice.

Moments when the killer of John F. Kennedy (Robert H. Jackson) was shot The author filmed Oswald, the man who once took the life of the President of the United States of America, John F. Kennedy. Everywhere there were indignant people who demanded the death penalty for the criminal. The photographer pressed the shutter and took another picture. The moment the flash was charging for the next shot, the killer was shot. The shot became fatal for Oswald.

The event depicted in the photograph cannot be called a worldwide tragedy (35 out of 97 people died), but everyone considers this picture to be the beginning of the oblivion of airships - the frame captured the crash of the Hindenburg airship of one well-known manufacturer. A dozen photographers from various publications had contracts for shooting. From that moment on, the airship was no longer considered the safest mode of transport in the world - its era soon passed.

Jean-Marc Bouju/AP. France. March 31, 2003. An Najaf, Iraq. A man tries to alleviate the difficult conditions for his son in a POW prison.

The photograph of an officer shooting a handcuffed prisoner in the head not only won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969, but also completely changed American attitudes towards what was happening in Vietnam. Despite the obviousness of the image, in fact, the photograph is not as unambiguous as it seemed to ordinary Americans, filled with sympathy for the executed. The fact is that the man in handcuffs is the captain of the Viet Cong "revenge warriors", and on this day many unarmed civilians were shot dead by him and his henchmen. General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, pictured left, has been haunted by his past all his life: he was refused treatment at an Australian military hospital, after moving to the US, he faced a massive campaign calling for his immediate deportation, the restaurant he opened in Virginia, every day was attacked by vandals. "We know who you are!" - this inscription haunted the general of the army all his life.

By the early summer of 1994, Kevin Carter (1960-1994) was at the height of his fame. He had just received the Pulitzer Prize, job offers from famous magazines poured in one after another. “Everyone congratulates me,” he wrote to his parents, “I can't wait to meet you and show you my trophy. This is the highest recognition of my work that I could not even dream of”, Kevin Carter received the Pulitzer Prize for the photograph “Famine in Sudan”, taken in the early spring of 1993. On this day, Carter flew to Sudan specifically to shoot scenes of hunger in a small village. Tired of shooting people who died of starvation, he left the village in a field overgrown with small bushes and suddenly heard a quiet cry. Looking around, he saw a little girl lying on the ground, apparently dying of hunger. He wanted to take a picture of her, but suddenly a vulture vulture landed a few steps away. Very carefully, trying not to startle the bird, Kevin chose the best position and took a picture. After that, he waited another twenty minutes, hoping that the bird would spread its wings and give him the opportunity to get a better shot. But the damned bird did not move, and in the end, he spat and drove it away. In the meantime, the girl apparently gained strength and went - more precisely crawled - further. And Kevin sat down near the tree and cried. He suddenly wanted to hug his daughter.

Malcolm Brown, a 3-year-old photographer (Associated Press) from New York, received a phone call and was asked to be at a certain intersection in Saigon the next morning, as something very important is about to happen. He arrived there with a reporter from the New York Times, and soon a car pulled up, several Buddhist monks got out of it. Among them is Thich Ouang Due, who sat in a lotus position with a box of matches in his hands, while the rest began to pour gasoline on him. Thich Quang Due struck a match and turned into a living torch. Unlike the weeping crowd watching him burn, he didn't utter a sound or move. Thich Quang Duo wrote a letter to the then head of the Vietnamese government asking him to stop the repression of Buddhists, stop the detention of monks and give them the right to practice and spread their religion, but received no answer.

A 12-year-old Afghan girl is the famous photograph taken by Steve McCurry in a refugee camp on the Afghan-Pakistani border. Soviet helicopters destroyed the village of a young refugee, her whole family died, and. before getting to the camp, the girl made a two-week journey in the mountains. After being published in June 1985, this photograph becomes a National Geographic icon. Since then, this image has been used everywhere - from tattoos to rugs, which turned the photo into one of the most replicated photos in the world.

The photograph was taken on September 29, 1932, on the 69th floor during the final months of Rockefeller Center's construction.

The photo, which depicted the hoisting of the Banner of Victory over the Reichstag, spread around the world. Yevgeny Khaldei, 1945.

The death of a Nazi functionary and his family. Vienna, 1945 Yevgeny Khaldei: “I went to the park near the parliament building to take pictures of the passing columns of soldiers. And I saw this picture. a little girl. A little further away lay the corpse of the father of the family. He had a gold NSDAP badge on his lapel, a revolver was lying nearby. (...) A watchman ran up from the parliament building: "It was he, he did, not Russian soldiers. Came at 6 am. I saw him and his family from the basement window. There is not a soul on the street. He pushed the benches together, ordered the woman to sit down, and ordered the children to do the same. I didn't understand what he was going to do. And then he shot the mother and son. The girl resisted, then he laid her on a bench and shot her too. He stepped aside, looked at the result and shot himself."

Kyoichi Sawada/United Press International, Japan. February 24, 1966 Tan Binh, southern Vietnam. The US military is dragging the body of a Viet Cong (South Vietnamese rebel) soldier on a leash.

"Little adults"... Three American girls gossip in one of the alleys of Sevilla in Spain. For a long time, the postcard with this image was the most popular in the United States.

Inimitable Marilyn Monroe Photo does not need comments! It captures one of the best actresses of all time - Marilyn Monroe in the minutes of her break. Someone distracted the girl and by sheer chance she took her eyes off the lens. However, this gave the picture an unusual mystery and true charm.

Republican soldier Federico Borel Garcia is depicted in the face of death. The picture caused a huge uproar in society. The situation is absolutely unique. During the whole time of the attack, the photographer took only one picture, while he took it at random, without looking into the viewfinder, he did not look at all in the direction of the “model”. And this is one of the best, one of the most famous photographs of him. It was thanks to this picture that already in 1938 the newspapers called the 25-year-old Robert Cap "The Greatest War Photographer in the World."

White and color photograph by Elliott Erwitt 1950.

Douglas Martin/AP. USA. September 4, 1956 - Dorothy Counts, one of the first black students, goes to college.

Anonymous/New York Times. September 11, 1973, Santiago, Chile. Democratically elected President Salvador Alende seconds before his death during a military coup at the presidential palace.

Kyoichi Sawada/United Press International, Japan-September 1965, Binh Dinh, South Vietnam. A mother and children cross a river to escape American aerial bombardment.

The photo depicts a terrible tragedy - on November 13, 1985, the eruption of the Colombian volcano Nevado del Ruiz. Muddy slush from the streams of mud and earth swallowed up all life under it. Over 23,000 people died in those days. A girl, Omaira Sanchaz, got into the frame a few hours before her death. She could not get out of the mud porridge, because her legs were clamped by a huge concrete slab. The rescuers did everything in their power. The girl behaved courageously, encouraging everyone around her. In a terrible trap, hoping for salvation, she spent three long days. On the fourth, she began to hallucinate and died from the viruses she picked up.

Take a closer look at this photo. This is one of the most remarkable photographs ever taken. The baby's tiny hand reached out from the womb to squeeze the surgeon's finger. By the way, the child is 21 weeks from conception, the age when he can still be legally aborted. The tiny pen in the photo belongs to a baby who was due to be born on December 28 last year. The photo was taken during an operation in America. The child is literally grasping for life. Therefore, this is one of the most remarkable photographs in medicine and a record of one of the most extraordinary operations in the world. It shows a 21-week-old fetus in the womb, just before the spinal surgery needed to save the baby from severe brain damage. The operation was performed through a tiny incision in the mother's wall and this is the youngest patient. At this time, the mother may choose to have an abortion. Little Samuel's mom said they "cried for days" when they saw this photo. She said: "This picture reminds us that my pregnancy is not a disease or handicap, it's a little person. "Samuel was born completely healthy, the operation was 100% successful. The doctor's name was Joseph Bruner. When he finished the operation, he said only one thing: "Beauty!" As an addition: in some Western countries it is allowed to have an abortion up to 28 weeks / in France up to 22 weeks, in the Russian Federation up to 12 weeks.

First X-ray, 1896 On January 13, 1896, Roentgen announced his achievement to Emperor Wilhelm II. And already on January 23 in Würzburg (Germany), where the famous laboratory of V.K. Roentgen was located, at a meeting of the Scientific Society of Medical Physicists, the scientist publicly takes an X-ray of the hand of one of the present members of the society - anatomist Professor Kolliker.

At the end of April 2004, the CBS program 60 Minutes II aired a story about the torture and abuse of inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison by a group of American soldiers. The story showed photographs that were published in The New Yorker a few days later. It became the most loud scandal around the American presence in Iraq.

A photograph that let the war into every home. One of the first war photojournalists, Matthew Brady was known as the creator of the daggerotypes of Abraham Lincoln and Robert Lee. Brady had it all: career, money, own business. And all this (as well as own life) he decided to risk following the army of northerners with a camera in his hands. Having narrowly escaped capture in the very first battle in which he took part, Brady somewhat lost his patriotic fervor and began to send assistants to the front line. Over several years of war, Brady and his team took more than 7,000 photographs. That's quite an impressive number, especially considering that taking a single image required equipment and chemicals placed inside a covered wagon pulled by several horses. Not very similar to the usual digital "soap dishes"? The photographs that seemed so appropriate on the battlefield had a very heavy aura. However, it was thanks to them that ordinary Americans for the first time were able to see the bitter and harsh military reality, not veiled by jingoistic slogans.

By Charles Moore/Black Star, 1963 The city of Birmingham, Alaska, has long been known as a hotbed of conflict between its fairly large African-American population and the white majority. The photo shows one of the episodes of the suppression of a peaceful demonstration for the rights of blacks, which was organized by Martin Luther King. The police use arrests, cavalry units and firearms, and poison people with dogs.

Poland - a girl Teresa, who grew up in a concentration camp, draws a "house" on the blackboard. 1948. © David Seymour

Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898-1995), photographer working for Life magazine, strolled around the square photographing the kissers. He later recalled that he noticed a sailor who “rushed around the square and kissed indiscriminately all the women in a row: young and old, fat and thin. I watched, but the desire to photograph did not appear. Suddenly he grabbed something white. I barely had time to raise the camera and take a picture of him kissing the nurse.” For millions of Americans, this photograph, which Eisenstadt called "Unconditional Surrender", has become a symbol of the end of World War II.

In fact, ratings are not a thankful thing and are very subjective. Summing up the best of the best in the rating lists, we still use some kind of our own internal tuning fork. We also decided to make our own rating list of the 10 greatest Soviet photographers, according to the site.

We note right away that the list will include several photographers who worked long before the formation of the Union of Soviets, however, their influence on the development of photography, both Soviet and world, is so great that it was simply impossible to say anything about them. And yet, given the subjectivity of this list, we tried to reflect in it the brightest representatives in each individual photographic genre.

The first place in our ranking undoubtedly belongs to. This is the greatest figure of culture and art. His influence on the development of Soviet art cannot be overestimated. He concentrated on himself art young country of the Soviets - was both a sculptor and an artist, and graphic designer, and a photographer. Considered one of the founders of constructivism. Rodchenko is a universal and multifaceted figure. He became an effective impetus for the development of photography and design. His methods of constructive construction of photography are used as canons.

The second position is occupied by a Russian photographer of the early 20th century - Georgy Goyningen-Hühne. Despite the fact that Georgy spent his entire professional life and activities in France, England and the USA, he is Russian by origin. And in this case, he serves as an example of how people from Russia achieved recognition and success abroad. George is one of the greatest fashion photographers of the 20s and 30s. By 1925, become the chief photographer of French Vogue. In 1935 - the American Harper's Bazaar. In 1943, two of his books are published, after which all his photographic attention is concentrated on Hollywood celebrities.

The contribution of Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky to the development of photographic art is great. Prokudin-Gorsky was a chemist and a photographer, and the occupation of one helped to improve - the second. He went down in history as the first experimenter who offered the possibility of creating a color photograph in Russia. The method used by Prokudin-Gorsky to acquire a photograph of color was not new. It was proposed back in 1855 by James Maxwell, it included the imposition of three negatives, where each is passed through a filter of a certain color - red, green and blue. These three negatives are superimposed on each other, in the projection they give a color image. Today, thanks to Prokudin-Gorsky, we have the opportunity to see Russia at the beginning of the 20th century in color.

Our top ten continues - the Soviet military photographer, the author of two of the greatest, iconic photographs of the Great Patriotic War - "The First Day of the War" and "The Banner over the Reichstag" - Yevgeny Khaldei. As a military photographer, Khaldei went through the entire Great Patriotic War, and his most significant works were made in the period from 1941 to 1946. The photographs of Chaldea are overflowing with a sense of historical importance. It is no secret that many of the photographer's works, including the work "The Banner over the Reichstag" were staged. Khaldei believed that photography should convey the spirit of time and events as fully as possible, therefore, there was no need to hurry. The author approached the creation of each work responsibly and thoroughly.

Our list continues with the classic of photographic journalism - Boris Ignatovich. Ignatovich was a close friend and colleague of Alexander Rodchenko, with whom in the late 1920s he organized a photographic association, the Oktyabr Group. It was a time of striving and searching for new forms. Creative people, as a rule, fruitfully engaged in several directions at the same time. So Ignatovich was a photographer, a photojournalist, a documentary filmmaker, a journalist, and an illustrator.

This is followed by the greatest Soviet portrait photographer -. Nappelbaum entered the history of photography as an unrivaled studio portrait photographer. Nappelbaum, a master of compositional solutions, approached the light composition in a surprising and original way, in which all the attention of the viewer is accumulated on the person being portrayed. As in the case with, through whose studio all foreign celebrities of the 20th century passed, the greatest representatives of the country of the Soviets, right up to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, passed through the Nappelbaum lens. Nappelbaum enjoyed great success and popularity as a good photographer. It is noteworthy that it was he who was invited to photograph the place of death of the great Russian poet - Sergei Yesenin.

Our top ten great Soviet photographers are continued by the first Russian landscape photographer, Vasily Sokornov. One of the first landscape painters who captured the beauty of Russian nature, and especially the Crimea, with a camera, was an artist by education, and a photographer by vocation - Vasily Sokornov. Sokornov's works were very popular during the lifetime of the photographer. Just like the works of , who photographed the nature of Virginia all his life, the works of Sokornov, for the most part, are devoted to the Crimea. They were published in magazines and scattered throughout Russia as postcards. Today it is considered the main chronicler of the Crimean nature of the first decades of the 20th century.

Founder of the Russian, Soviet journalistic, social photography– Maxim Dmitriev, occupies the eighth position in our rating. The life and work of Dmitriev is the story of an incredible rise and an equally incredible fall. A native of the Tambov province, a student of the parochial school, by the beginning of the 1900s, Dmitriev became the leading photographer of Moscow. The founder of the photo studio, through which the leading people of the time pass - Ivan Bunin, Fedor Chaliapin, Maxim Gorky. But we love and remember Dmitriev for his chronicle photographs of the Volga region. They concentrate the original life and way of Russia, skillfully noticed by a brilliant photographer. The fall of Dmitriev was the coming to power of the Bolsheviks and widespread dispossession. By the beginning of the 1930s, the artist's photo studio was selected, along with more than seven thousand magnificent local history photographs.

In our rating, we could not help but write about the only Soviet representative in the photographic agency -. The very presence of Pinkhasov in the agency speaks for itself. An iconic documentary photographer, Pinkhasov masters the genre of reportage street photography, camera, composition, light and color.

Completes our top ten, if I may say so, glamorous Soviet photographer- Valery Plotnikov. Plotnikov is the author of portraits of Soviet icons of the 20th century, such as Vladimir Vysotsky, Anastasia Vertinskaya, Sergei Parajanov. Not a single Soviet magazine was published without Plotnikov's copyright work.

Thousands of photographers work around the world, capturing events, places, people and animals every day, producing hundreds of thousands of photographs. But only a few become globally known, replicated, used in modern culture and are called photo icons. And each of these photos has its own story ...

The photo of Ernesto Che Guevara in a black beret is recognized as a symbol of the 20th century, the most famous and most reproduced photograph in the world. It was taken on March 5, 1960 in Havana during a memorial service for the victims of the explosion of the ship La Coubre, its author, Alberto Korda, then the official photographer of Fidel Castro, said that at that moment he was shocked by the expression on the face of 31-year-old Che, on which "absolute intransigence", anger and pain were written simultaneously. At the same time, Che appeared in the photographer's viewfinder only for a couple of seconds after Fidel's heated speech (in which the famous words "Patria O Muerte" were used for the first time), and then again retreated into the shadows. The photo was rejected by the editor of the magazine "Revolution", and this upset Korda, who was convinced of the power of this work. He cropped the picture, printed it out in several copies, hung one on the wall at home, and gave the rest to friends. Since this all started. By the way, Korda never asked for royalties for the use and reproduction of this photo, but was against the commercial use of Che's image. Especially in advertising those products that the Comandante would never have supported. Alberto sued, for example, agencies Lowe Lintas and Rex Features when they started selling Smirnoff vodka using this picture. He won $50,000, which he immediately donated to Cuban medicine.

Einstein turned 72 on the day this photograph was taken. On March 14, 1951, almost all publications photographed him, and he was very tired and annoyed. UPI photographer Arthur Sasse was one of the last, and he worked hard to get Einstein to smile. But the greatest mind of the twentieth century showed the photographer his tongue instead. In 2009, the original photograph of the mischievous Einstein was auctioned off for $74,324.

The most famous photograph of one of Britain's most famous and revered politicians was taken under rather amusing circumstances. As you know, Churchill never parted with his cigar, including in photographs. And when photographer Yusuf Karsh came to him to shoot, he was not going to change himself. Yusuf first delicately placed an ashtray in front of the Prime Minister, but he ignored it, and the photographer had to say “I'm sorry, sir” and pull the cigar from Churchill himself. “When I returned to the camera, he looked as if he wanted to devour me,” Karsh, the author of one of the most expressive portraits of all time, later recalled.

National Geographic magazine in 1984 set out to trace the genetic path of green eyes, which began in the time of Genghis Khan. While researching and collecting material for the Green Eyes project, photographer Steve McCurry photographed an Afghan girl who, as it turned out 17 years later, was named Sharbat Gula (Sharbat Gula). A picture of a frightened, wide-eyed refugee beauty was featured on the cover of National Geographic in 1985 and has since become a world-famous symbol of the Afghan conflict and the suffering of refugees around the world. Now the photo is even called the “Afghan Mona Lisa”. By the time the National Geographic team found Sharbat, she was already about thirty, she returned to her native Afghanistan and had never seen this photo before meeting with NG and did not know about her worldwide fame.

The picture of Robert Capa, taken on September 5, 1936, has long been a symbol of the bloody and ruthless Spanish Civil War. It depicts an armed militiaman in civilian clothes falling backwards after being fatally shot by an enemy. The photo is very emotional, dramatic, capturing a terrible moment - that's why it instantly gained popularity, but at the same time, doubts from a part of society. And now almost no one doubts that the cult shot was a production. Firstly, it was not made at the site of the fighting, but a few kilometers from it. And secondly, Federico Borrell García, who tragically died in a photograph in an open field and was then identified, was actually shot while trying to hide behind a tree.

And this picture is not staged, and for more than 40 years people have been watching the endless execution of the Viet Cong Nguyen Van Lem by General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. Photographer Eddie Adams has documented thirteen wars, but his most famous photograph is this one taken on February 1, 1968. For which he later had to apologize. The picture instantly spread through newspapers and news agencies, everyone in the States spoke about it, many with reproach and indignation - what is on it is too scary. Eddie claimed that it was not a planned shot, that it was some kind of reflex, and he did not even know what he shot until he developed the film. And having shown, I realized that it is impossible to hush up this. But later he wrote in Time: “The general killed the Viet Cong, I killed the general with my camera. Photos are still the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but the photographs lie, even without such intentions. They are only half true. The photo didn't say "What would you do if you were that general at the time and place on that hot day when you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew up one, two or three Americans?" While General Nguyen was still alive, Adams apologized to him and his family for the irreparable damage that this photograph had done to the general's honor.

Another world-famous photo of the Vietnam War is nowhere near as ambiguous as the previous one. This is a symbol of the horror and suffering of innocent people who fall "under the distribution" along with the military. The image, taken by South Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut, shows people running from the napalm that the South Vietnamese military pours on the village. The logical center of the composition is a naked girl who screams in horror and pain. This is nine-year-old Kim Fook, she has terrible third-degree burns on her back and back of her legs, and she is trying to escape. After taking a picture, Nick picked up the girl and took her and other injured children to the hospital. The doctors were sure that she would not survive, but after 14 months in the hospital and 17 operations, Kim Fook became practically healthy. The photographer constantly visited her both in the hospital and after her discharge, until he left Saigon three years later. Kim is still alive today, she devoted her life to medicine and helping children victims of wars. Sometimes she gives interviews and participates in talk shows: “Napalm is the most terrible pain you can imagine. Water boils at 100 degrees, and napalm has a temperature of 800 to 1200. Forgiveness freed me from hatred. I still have a lot of scars on my body and I am in a lot of pain almost all the time, but my heart is clear. Napalm is strong, but faith, forgiveness and love are much stronger. We wouldn't have wars at all if everyone could figure out how to live with true love, hope, and forgiveness. If that little girl in the photo could do it, ask yourself if you can too?”

Photography is a symbol of the confrontation between the power of weapons and the strength of the human spirit. A single person walked out in front of a column of tanks near Beijing's Tiananmen Square during the June 1989 riots. He had two ordinary plastic bags in his hands, with which he threatened the tanks when they stopped. The first tank made an attempt to bypass the man, but he again stood in his way. After several unsuccessful attempts to bypass it, the tanks turned off the engines, and the commander of the first one spoke to the stubborn peacekeeper. Then he again tried to go around him, and the man again stood in front of the tank. Four photographers captured the moment, but the world-famous photograph was that of Jeff Widener, long banned in China. The man was never identified, but he was included by Time magazine in the list of the 100 most important people of the twentieth century.

This shocking photograph not only shows the suffering of children in Sudan during the 1993 famine, but also tells the story of the mental anguish of the photographer who took the picture. Kevin Carter won a Pulitzer Prize for this photo and blew his car's exhaust into the cabin two months later. A little exhausted girl, crawling towards the humanitarian aid camp, stopped to rest, at which time a hungry vulture dived into the clearing and walked in circles in anticipation of the death of a child. Kevin waited 20 minutes before the shot got good enough for him. And only then drove the vulture away, and the girl crawled on. A wave of criticism hit Carter and the most prestigious journalistic award. But he could not live with various financial problems, with what he saw in Sudan, and with what he himself participated in. In July 1994, he committed suicide.

The most famous kiss in the world was filmed by Albert Eisenstadt in Times Square during the Victory over Japan Day celebrations on August 14, 1945. During the crowded noisy festivities, Eisenstadt did not have time to ask the names of the heroes of the picture, and therefore they remained unknown for a long time. It was only in 1980 that it was possible to establish that the nurse in the photograph was Edith Shane. But the name of the sailor is still a mystery - 11 people said that it was them, but they could not prove it. Here is what Eisenstadt said about the moment of shooting: “I saw a sailor running down the street and grabbing any girl who was in his field of vision. Whether she was old or young, fat or thin, he didn't care. I ran ahead of him with my Leica looking back over my shoulder, but I didn't like any of the pictures. Then all of a sudden I saw him grab someone in white. I turned around and filmed the moment the sailor kissed the nurse. If she was wearing dark clothes, I would never have photographed them. As if the sailor was in a white uniform. I took 4 photos in a few seconds, but only one satisfied me.”